{"id":50879,"date":"2012-09-10T11:12:25","date_gmt":"2012-09-10T16:12:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=50879"},"modified":"2013-02-11T03:38:40","modified_gmt":"2013-02-11T08:38:40","slug":"the-power-elite-connections-between-business-and-politics-in-the-u-s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/09\/10\/the-power-elite-connections-between-business-and-politics-in-the-u-s\/","title":{"rendered":"The Power Elite: Connections Between Business and Politics in the U.S."},"content":{"rendered":"

In 1956 sociologist C. Wright Mills published a book titled The Power Elite<\/em><\/a>. \u00a0In it, he argued that our democracy was corrupt because the same people exercised power in business, the military, and politics. \u00a0This small group, with so many important roles and connections, had an influence on our society that was far out-of-proportion with their numbers. \u00a0This, he concluded, was a dire situation.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to 2012 and Lambert Strether posted a series of Venn diagrams at Naked Capitalism<\/a>. \u00a0Strether writes:<\/p>\n

[This] nifty visualization… shows how many, many people, through the operations of Washington\u2019s revolving door, have held high-level positions both in the Federal government and in major corporations. To take but one example, the set of all Treasury Secretaries includes Hank Paulson and Bob Rubin, which overlaps with the set of all Goldman Sachs COOs. The overlapping is pervasive. Political scientists and the rest of us have names for such cozy arrangements \u2014 oligarchy, corporatism, fascism, \u201ccrony capitalism\u201d \u2014 but one name that doesn\u2019t apply is democracy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

UPDATE:<\/strong> I’ve included a criticism of the methodology after the diagrams; the overlap portrayed here is almost exclusively among Democratic politicians and the diagrams were explicitly intended to point out connections among progressives.<\/em><\/p>\n

See for yourself:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

On the methods for putting together these diagrams, Strether writes<\/a>\u00a0about the person who’s behind the diagrams:<\/p>\n

Herman\u2019s honest: Her goal is to \u201cexpose progressive corporatism,\u201d and \u2014 assuming for the sake of the argument that D[emocrat]s are progressive, and that \u201cprogressives<\/em>\u201d are progressive \u2014 her chart does exactly that, and very effectively, too.<\/p>\n

But what her data does not do is expose corporatism\u00a0as such<\/em>; there are very, very few Rs listed; it strains credulity that Hank Paulson was the\u00a0only<\/em>\u00a0high-level GS\u00a0operative in the Bush administration, for example, and if GS isn\u2019t the R[epublican]s\u2019 favorite bank, there\u2019s surely another.<\/p>\n

Hence, Herman\u2019s chart, if divorced from context[2], might lead somebody \u2014 say, a child of six \u2014 to conclude that the\u00a0only<\/em>\u00a0corporatists in Washington DC are D[emocrat]s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thanks to Carolyn Taylor for pointing out the methods bias.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 1956 sociologist C. Wright Mills published a book titled The Power Elite. \u00a0In it, he argued that our democracy was corrupt because the same people exercised power in business, the military, and politics. \u00a0This small group, with so many important roles and connections, had an influence on our society that was far out-of-proportion with […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,36,98,702,252,129,8118,85,76],"class_list":["post-50879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-class","tag-economics","tag-capitalism","tag-energy","tag-healthmedicine","tag-media","tag-organizationsinstitutions","tag-politics","tag-work"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50879"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50879\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":50973,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50879\/revisions\/50973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}